Soul of the Machine
by Nike Athena
Summary: Gamma finds there's a bit more to Irie Shouichi than meets the eye...


Title: Soul of the Machine  
Author: me  
Pairing: none  
Rating: G  
Warning: None, really. Shouichi's pimp-tacularness?  
Summary: Nothing annoys Gamma more than being deferred. Nothing angers Shouichi more than having something precious to him threatened. Cervellos are secretly clingy creatures.

Gamma would be the first person to admit that he wasn't the most sensitive or subtle of people. Or at least not when he was angry, or felt some powerful, overriding emotion. It was territory that came around with being a man, he supposed (though Genkishi often begged to differ, and Gamma often countered that Genkishi wasn't exactly manly himself), and he was almost always able to control himself, or at least run damage control for himself if he proved to be an entire ass.

But he was, after all a man; so he was prone to blowing up, showing rage displays, or threatening things that got in his way. This even extended, when he was in his most precarious state of mind, to his comrades, his family. And even when he wasn't in an unstable state of mind, just pissed off, he would lash out at the people who were supposed to be his family, but really weren't. But he was old enough now that he was able to control himself, and he had come to utilize his temper only when needed.

Which would be the case right now, he supposed. What had been happening wasn't really important- the Twins had come to inform Gamma of a mission that he was to preside over, something of grave importance. Gamma might have otherwise been fine with the mission, maybe even a bit happy, but one thing jumped out foremost at Gamma and made his blood boil. The absence of Irie Shouichi.

And even though ordinarily, he would have been relieved at the absence of the youth, the fact that he wasn't present to deliver an important mission spoke volumes to Gamma as to where the man stood in Irie's mind. And it wasn't very high on the totem pole, he considered, scraping his hair back from his face as he made himself coffee, and smiled in a slightly disjointedly way (a way that had Nosaru looking up at Gamma alarmedly as he handed the man the cream pitcher) as he listened to the deeper-voiced Cervello make her final comments.

"Your answer?" She queried, her face as blank and emotionless as her voice. Gamma finally turned (a smooth, hairpin turn that made his men present watch with eager, frightened anticipation), his smile still plastered on his face, to face the duo, before hurling his coffee mug into the far wall, whereupon it exploded impressively, and answered.

"You tell your master that he better get his ass down here and tell me this himself, or I'm not moving from this spot, and no amount of force, torture or penalization is going to make me." Gamma, who had been restraining his anger till then, let it spill out with his glare as he stepped forward, menacingly, to the girls. "Got it?"

He didn't exactly expect them to react the way they did; he had expected them to quit the room, summon Irie with their communicators, or act slightly shocked. However, both hesitated, fear showing plainly on their faces, and retreated hastily to the person who had just opened the door.

"What's the problem here?" Irie Shouichi asked, his voice a weary, slurred drawl, because he obviously had heard Gamma's raised voice and shattering implements. It quickly became a strange sort of authoritarian, protective demand when the girls clung to him apprehensively (as any frightened woman might have, Gamma realized, going to a person who she knew she could rely on and protect her). "What have you done?"

Gamma felt his rage melting away at the unexpected sight, to be replaced with something like embarrassment, like he might have felt upon scaring any woman so. "I didn't know they could be afraid." He answered wonderingly, watching as Irie, as small and weak looking as he was, became the fierce protector of the two girls, his fists clenching, his back straightening, and his body stiffening, hips jutting, seemingly uncaring that the Cervello were now clinging to him like wet blankets. All the cues for a fight, Gamma realized, or at least intimidation.

"Of course they can." The boy answered, exasperated as he tried to calm the two. "It's a natural self-preservative reaction when someone offers a rage-display." He regarded the two with a small frown. "You two didn't already give him the report, did you? I told you to leave it until I got here. Remember?" The deeper-voiced Cervello regarded Irie in turn slightly wanly.

"Of course, Irie-sama. I thought it might be better to save you the energy." That she wasn't stricken mute with fear might have ordinarily made Gamma feel slightly better, though it hadn't in this case. The soul of the machine, as it were.

Irie turned to regard Gamma, and his face was the grim, sharp one of a commander's, and more of a man protecting something he cherished; he looked, for the first time Gamma had known him, rather powerful and in command. He didn't seem to care (surprisingly, for Gamma could always smell the fear on the boy when he was in Gamma's infinitely more frightening and experienced presence) where he was, or who he was talking to.

"Anyway." The boy said, and his voice had deepened, and maybe he actually was cut out for this job, if the glint in his eyes and the steel in his voice was any indicator, something that made Gamma smile wolfishly in reaction.

"I would appreciate it if you wouldn't try to intimidate my men in place of myself." And that sounded like nothing if not a challenge, but Gamma found he couldn't really hate the kid for it, not when he was only obviously protecting something he cherished. It was something, Gamma found, he could work with, something not all White Spells had. It even made Gamma a little wistful, because it was something that so resembled the famiglia of old, and maybe, maybe, this kid wasn't so cut out to be in the White Spell after all.

Irie looked as if he could read this in Gamma's face, for the youth's own expression had become one (strangely) of wariness until Gamma spoke again. "Alright, Irie. What was it, exactly, you wanted me to do, again?"


End file.
